more lofty one, if such an one exist anywhere in the universe? If one could believe in a Ruling Power and the plan of the universe as its work, would it not be terribly cruel and revoltingly unjust that this power, instead of treating all living beings alike, should make a kind of selection of grace and lead some up to a higher level while it condemned others to lasting lowliness, and that it should ordain that on the road from the unicellular organism to man, countless connecting links should be left hopelessly behind and not be permitted to continue their ascent? Or must we admit the humiliating conclusion that a greater amount of consciousness does not necessarily imply higher rank and greater dignity, and that a protista, with its almost unimaginably pale and narrow consciousness, can have just as great a feeling of well-being as man with his immeasurably superior intellectual life; that therefore the protista suffers no wrong if it never gets beyond its present stage of evolution; and finally that the amount of the outer world which man can absorb in his consciousness is as far removed from the entirety of the universe as the contents of the protista's consciousness are from that of the human mind? No answer can be found to these questions. Whatever purports to be an answer, be it introduced as theology or as philosophy, is visionary or nonsensical. We must resign ourselves to moving in a very small circle moderately illuminated by Reason, while all around, if we seek to penetrate beyond it, we perceive gruesome darkness.